Discussion
Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS) define a signficantly more-efficient datamodel for processing spatial information!
I'd use this in the feature-phone I'm planning, so I don't need a fancier CPU for a rarely-used feature.
Imagine triangles, hexagons, or squares tessellated across the earth's surface with more of the same nested inside. Give each an ID based on its position in this hierarchy & represent a location as a set of these zone IDs... Then its as cheap to process as any other set!
1/
There's several different grids defined, whose differences do matter when interpreting data encoded in them. But these differences barely make a difference to a computer.
Much of our analysis can be done from the perspective of sets, but we may also want to flatten the grid to a certain level to compute distances or buffer the surface area of a location. Which isn't any more computationally expensive than rendering numbers.
Or we might associate data with each "zone" to be processed.
2/3!
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